Pokrovsk is one of the most isolated, deserted and damaged cities on the front line in Ukrainian hands. The Russians have been attemptinng to take the city for the entirety of 2004 and continue to do so in 2025, and have it surrounded on two sides. Despite being only about 5 kilometres away from the centre, and the city being almost deserted (having a resident population of only about 5,000 out of 60,000, after a general civilian evacuation order was issued), the Ukrainian Armed Forces have undertaken a remarkable job of defending it.
In Pokrovsk there is no electricity (aside from occasional diesel generators), no public transport, no electricity, no heating, no gas and no running water. There are no public services whatsoever. Only four shops remain open in the entire city. There is a railway station but no trains. The bridge east from Pokrovsk to the suburb of Myrnohrad has been blown up and Myrnohrad can only be reached on foot.
There appears to be an unofficial curfew from 3pm to 11am, seven days a week, for the very few remaining residents. There is only a handful of cars on the streets. Most have been blown up with first personal view (FPV) drones and the streets are full of blown out vehicles. A few residents cycle around the atrociously potholed streets, with holes where shells and other ammunition have landed. A few old ladies and children hang around on the streets during non-curfew hours, with nothing to do.
The centre of the city is not particularly large, but when we visited it was -5 degrees celsius and it was unpleasant to walk around. Driving around one felt a constant sense of danger from FPV drones that had hit so many other vehicles and burned them out, and a decent SUV was necessary both to navigate the roads in the city and in and out. Moreover the main road into Pokrovsk from the west is guarded by a ferocious military checkpoint that checks the documents and vehicles of every person passing in. In our case our story about bringing dog food and cat food to the animals in Pokrovsk wasn't going to work. There are no dogs and cats left in Pokrovsk - they've all died of cold. The streets are empty of all life except the occasional human. So we were banned entrance to Pokrovsk along the main road - along with all but military traffic - due to the risk of drone strikes. There's also constant artillery and mortar shelling on both sides of the front line here, with relentless booms in the background that sound ever louder the longer you are there.
Instead we talked our way into being allowed to take the road to Dobropillya, a safe town in western Donetsk oblast where soldiers can take brief respite from the front line, and our passports and other identity documents were photographed as were our car number plates. Then we took a series of bumpy and turning backroads to enter Pokrovsk via a series of villages. Several of the main roads were blocked off with red and white striped barriers; but by going down other back roads we managed to get into the centre of the city in which everything was destroyed.
In the videos below, we show a few details from our journey, starting from a village south of Pokrovsk and involving an extended drive down difficult roads to the military checkpoint, the territory at every turn surrounded by Russian occupiers. We survived a long delay, and we achieved something very few people manage because Pokrovsk is now sealed off to all but the most hardy adventurers: we achieved a tour of Pokrovsk. Who knows when if and when we will ever be able to go back. Many people who go there do not live to tell the tale.
